Episode 140 - Jaafar Jackson as MJ: Did He Pull It Off? | MICHAEL Movie Review - Spoilers!

MICHAEL Movie Review & Full Spoilers Revealed! Is the Michael Jackson biopic the best music biopic of all time? Today, we are diving deep into a full breakdown and spoiler review of the highly anticipated 2026 film 'Michael'. From his rise in the Jackson 5 to becoming the King of Pop, we break down the best scenes, the incredible cast performances, the direction, and provide our final verdict.

#MichaelMovie #MichaelJackson #MovieReview #Thriller #MichaelJacksonBiopic

ABOUT THE FILM: 

Director: Antoine Fuqua (Training Day, The Equalizer)
Screenwriter: John Logan (Gladiator, Skyfall)
 
Key Cast & Characters:

Jaafar Jackson as Michael Jackson
Juliano Krue Valdi as young Michael Jackson
Colman Domingo as Joe Jackson
Nia Long as Katherine Jackson
Miles Teller as John Branca

Global Box Office: 'Michael' has completely dominated the 2026 box office, crossing a massive $902 million globally and tracking rapidly toward the $1 billion milestone. It is currently one of the highest-grossing musical biopics of all time.

CHAPTERS

0:00 Intro & Audible Free Trial
3:25 Who Was Michael Jackson
11:46 Cast & Characters
17:11 Top Spoiler Moments
22:25 The Verdict

KEY TOPICS COVERED IN THIS VIDEO

Did Jaafar Jackson accurately portray the King of Pop?
How Antoine Fuqua handled the most controversial elements of MJ's life?
How harsh was Joe Jackson on Michaels upbringing?
The infamous Pepsi commercial fire that changed Michael’s life
Detailed analysis of the rise of MJ from the Jackson 5 to the Victory Tour
Our breakdown of the ending and the overall movie verdict.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Making just under $900 million at the box office globally, Michael is a commercial juggernaut. However, the film pinpoints the exact tragic moment of the pop star's downfall. Let's go through it all. Alright alright. So welcome back to DMR. Thank you for tuning back in. As always, much blind. So I hope you enjoyed the deep dive spoiler review for the boys that came out a couple of weeks ago. Make sure you catch that on Apple Podcast video format live. That's right. YouTube, Spotify. It's up now. Go and enjoy that one. So today I'm going to be going over the Michael Jackson biopic, which is simply called Michael. It came out about a month ago. I saw it about a week ago on a Sunday afternoon. So is Michael all it's cracked up to be? Is this going to live up to the King of Pop's global reputation? The guy was simply an absolute just star. I don't think we're going to see someone as big as Michael. Again, yeah, you've got the odd star nowadays that are pretty big, but to the level that Michael was, I just don't think we're going to see someone in this generation. I think he's going to be like a once in a 100-year star. So let's go through it. This is going to be a spoiler review as well. So you have been warned. So if you haven't seen the film, go out and check it. But we all kind of know the story anyhow. So what we're going to do, we're going to be breaking it down into three sections who Michael Jackson was, who the cast and the crew are in the actual film, and what roles they portray, and also the main spoilers in this film. But before we do, a reminder that DMR is part of the Audible Creators Program. So what does that mean for you, the viewer or the listener at home? Well, there's a link in my bio. You can jump on that link. It will take you over to Audible and you can start a 30-day free trial on behalf of DMR. That's right, 30 days for free. And I have banged on about this particular title before because it's an absolute cracker, which is the book of Sheen. Charlie Sheen wrote this book about his life. He narrates it as well. Winning, winning. So you can't get enough of this particular book. I couldn't put it down. It's amazing. It basically goes through all of his life, all the shenanigans. This guy just he took it to the next level and beyond in terms of his partying, all his success he had with his films in the early 80s with Platoon, and then he had Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Then, of course, he had Hotshots as well, his success with two and a half men, and of course the winning phase as well. So make sure you jump on there, grab that book. Again, terms and conditions do apply if you stick around past the 30 days, but you will be supporting DMR as well. Alright, so let's rip into Michael Shall we, the global juggernaut that's taken the world by storm. But is it any good?

SPEAKER_00 3:09

Welcome to DMR, Dewey's movie reviews, the red carpet treatment.

SPEAKER_01 3:24

Alright, so as I said, we're gonna be breaking this down into three sections. So who was Michael Jackson? If you've been living under a rock, there's no way you don't know him. Surely. Surely. If you've been living under the rock for what, 50 years, I think it is. You won't know who this person is. But if you haven't, you know exactly who he is. Michael Jackson was one of the greatest musicians, if that's when you put it, singers, songwriters. Did he write his songs? I can't recall. I think he did. The world has ever seen. The guy absolutely flipped entertainment and live performances absolutely on its head. And the film basically depicts this quite well. Quite well. But but it's not the whole story, it's not the full story of Michael Jackson. So I'll get into that a little bit later. So let's rip into my notes, my show notes basically. So who was Michael Jackson? The man and the myth, the relentless perfectionist, driven by a singular focus to become the world's greatest entertainer, constantly pushing his body and his vocals to the absolute edge. So we all know what this guy was like in terms of his performances. I personally never saw him. I'm a 1985 baby. So basically his rise to fame started when he was a kid, and it moved up into when he was a teenager, especially in the 80s when all the music video started coming out and whatnot. So he was pretty amazing when it comes to all the performances that he did throughout his life. So he was also a product of severe abuse, shaped heavily by the intense physical and emotional trauma inflicted by his father, Joe Jackson, during his childhood. So the film basically kicks off in I think it's Indiana, where his dad is basically working in a steel mill. He's got a packet of kids, there's a stack of them. And the video, not video, the cinematography in the film is very cool, especially how they capture this industrial. I think it's a steel mill that he works at. And you see the drive of the father that is vicariously living through his kids' performance. And it starts off with the Jackson 5, with Michael being the singer and the youngest of the boys, and the older sons are basically in their teenage years, I think it is. And you see them going around in the early 70s, I think it was, might have been late 60s, but early 70s, of them on the road travelling relentlessly and just picking up gigs wherever they could. But I've got to give it to Joe Jackson, despite his abuse and whatnot that they depict in the film and his drive with these kids, without Joe Jackson, and I'm no way in hell an advocate for this type of abuse. No way. I'm a dad and myself, I've got two boys. So love them dearly. But without Joe Jackson, I really don't think there would have been a Michael Jackson with that push. It's a double-edged sword. Chicken before the egg. So if you don't have Joe Jackson, you don't have Michael Jackson, I don't think. You'd probably be stuck in Indiana, would have become nobody. So they do that quite well in the film. So continuing on here, the Escapist and Isolated Child. Having missed out on a normal upbringing, he spent his adult life trying to recreate a lost childhood through eccentricians, I think that is, and isolating himself from the real world. So you see that in the film as well. So basically, they live when they make it out of Indiana, especially into his teen years, when he starts doing the albums, the solo albums in the early 80s. I think it was Thriller, was I think that was the first one that came out. You basically see him start to buy very extravagant items for his play toys basically. So throughout the start of the film, you see him in the backs of the combi vans going around to gigs, and whilst the other boys are sleeping, the teenage boys are sleeping, you see him in the back with a torch reading stuff like Peter Pan, hence where Netherland comes from. But throughout the film, you also see that he starts to they upgrade into this massive mansion type thing, and the whole family is living in it. I can't recall exactly where it is, but he starts buying pretty hectic things, like especially with the animals. Now I'm an animal advocate. I film humpback whales and migration and a lot of sea life with my drone, so I don't condone having these types of animals in captivity at all, especially if you've got girars, llamas llamas a bit different, they're a bit of a farmyard type animal, but especially the giraffes and bubbles, the chimp as well, which I think is actually still alive, which is pretty wild. So you do see a lot of that in the film with the ridiculous amount of money that he gets. So continuing on here, we've got a soulful prodigy showing advanced emotional maturity in his musical delivery, even as a young boy leading in the Jackson 5 in Gary, Indiana. So, again, we've already gone over that. The boundary breaker obsessed with blending genres, rock, pop, and RB, and shattering racial barriers on platforms like MTV. And there's one particular guy in the show or the movie that right away I didn't see who it was. I think he was a producer or head of one of the music studios that he was involved with. And it's Mike Myers. Mike Myers, I could not see him on the screen for a bit until he did this kind of accent, this New Jersey accent, and I picked it up straight away. But you can't see him. Very, very cool, very similar to Inglorious Bastes, where he has that cameo as the Colonel of the General for a brief moment, but you do see him in the film, so that was pretty cool as well. So continuing on here, we've got the vulnerable target, so highly sensitive, easily taken advantage of by his advisors, and constantly defensive against an aggressive media landscape. Okay. So he was pretty vulnerable. You do see that in the film to a degree. Pros and cons to a degree. The creative dictator processing total artistic control over his choreography, short films, music videos, and sonic production, alongside Quentin Jones. So we've also got here the tortured humanitarian sincerely wanting to heal the world while simultaneously battling internal demons, insomnia, and the physical toll on his grueling career. And that's basically Michael Jackson in a nutshell. Of course, there's there's plenty of other things that he did as well with all the music videos, and as I said, in that humanitarian work. There's a cool part in the scene where there's a lot of gang violence as well, and he gets the bloods and the crips together for a music video. I'm not sure how accurate that is, but that was pretty cool to see in the film too. So that's a bit of a snapshot of Michael Jackson the Man and the Mystery. So let's go over the cast and crew of this particular film. Alright, so the cast and the crew. So we've been waiting for a Michael Jackson movie for many, many years. They've been very successful biopics that have come out in the music industry with Bohemian Rhapsody about Queen. You've also got Rocket Man as well, which came out a couple of years ago. Both are pretty grueling. Both are pretty grueling in terms of the drugs and alcohol addiction that the two singers from those bands being Freddie Mercury and Elton John went through. So they didn't sugarcoat that too much in those particular films. And both of those films worked very well. However, with Michael being a biopic, I'm pretty sure those two ones that I mentioned, they go through the whole life or what life remains of those two singers. Elton John's still alive, obviously Freddie Mercury isn't. But Michael is not the whole picture, and I'll get to that shortly as well. So the characters. So who was going to play Michael? That was always the big thing as well. Like, who can step into Michael's shoes and recreate the story of Michael Jackson? And they ended up going with his nephew, which is a guy called Jafar Jackson. Jafar Jackson is not an actor, and I've seen bits and pieces of the story behind choosing. I think the director basically looks, went up to him and said, You look exactly like Michael. He goes, Jafar goes, I'm not an actor. He goes, Yeah, I understand, but would you want the gig? Apparently went and took some acting lessons. But Jafar absolutely knocks it out of the park when you watch him up on the screen. You don't see Jafar Jackson, you see Michael Jackson, you see Michael up on the screen. It is freaky. It is freaky. It's not an impersonation either. He completely embodies the singer. And I think the only way that he could have done that is if you were related to him, which he is. There's no other one person out there that could have filled his particular shoes. He knocks it out of the park. Amazing. I don't know if you'll get an Oscar for this portrayal of Michael Jackson, but it's extremely good to the point where he's moving exactly like him. Uncanny, just amazing stuff. So he does very well there. You've also got young Michael Jackson, which is played by a young kid called Julian Crualdi, and he captures the early years of Michael Jackson when he's coming up in Indiana when he's on the road and whatnot. Now, Joe Jackson is played by Coleman Domingo. Coleman is the villain in this particular film being Joe Jackson. So a lot of the film is based around the relationship between Michael Jackson and Joe Jackson. Again, what I said before, double-edged sword. Without a Joe Jackson, there is no Michael Jackson. So whilst the abuse with what took place with the beltings and all that kind of stuff, I don't condone it at all or frown upon it, it's no good. But again, if it didn't happen, you're gonna wonder, would Michael have got to where he was without Joe Jackson? And the film basically has a bit of a grey area where it teeters between the yes and no to that particular answer. So but he is very good. Best supporting actor. I think he could be up for an award. So very good job from him there. We've also got Catherine Jackson, which is played by Nita Long. She does a great role in the film as well. We've got here John Brancar, played by Miles Teller, so Michael's Sharp Entertainment Attorney and Manager. He does a good role too, brief, but still very good. Quincy Jones is played by Keelan Darrell Jones, a legendary music producer who helps Michael craft the iconic sounds to off the war thriller and bam. We've also got Susan Di Passy played by Laura Harry Harrier, the Motown executive who played a massive role in mentoring, styling, and publicizing the Jackson 5. And you've also got Barry Gordy played by Lorenzo Tate, the iconic founder of Motan Records, who first signs the family band up and launches them into Superstardom. So everyone does a great role in this movie. Again, I mentioned Mike Myers in it briefly, but it's an amazing cast and crew, and they've done an amazing role with all the different characters that they portray up on the screen. It all comes together very well, and it's a lot of the behind the scenes stuff that we get to see with what happened with Michael Jackson and his upbringing, and it all leads into one big finale at the end. So let's go over the spoilers of the film. Again, if you haven't seen it, go back and check it out, and then we'll wrap it up from there. Alright, so here we go. The top ten moments of Michael the film. And I didn't mention before, but the director of the film is Antonio Fukui, I think it's how you say his last name, who was responsible for training day. So let's go over the top 10 moments, shall we? So we've got here the man in the mirror, the book, and the movie opens and closes with a raw close-up performance footage, setting up a psychological profile of the man trying to reconcile his public genius with his private pain. Next one. So it is in there, but I feel that they went through a hell of a lot more than what they show up on the screen. So we've got here the next one breaking away from Motown, which is a major dramatic turning point where Michael stands up to his family and Barry Gordry to push for a modem sound leading to their departure of Motown for SBS and Epic Records. Then we've also got here the creation of the Moonwalk and Jafar Jackson, as I said, he absolutely nails this. The Moonwalk is very, very cool. So the behind-the-scenes recreation of the legendary Motown 25 special performance showcase in the exact moment Michael debuted the Moonwalk and cemented his solo god tier status. So very cool stuff there. You've also got shutting down the executives, an intense boardroom scene where the epic at Epic Records, the executives doubt the viability of Thriller and its massive budget, only for Michael and Quincy Jones to fiercely defend the visions of Billy Jean and Thriller in the short films. And we've got here the chilling Pepsi commercial fire. So this is where it all goes pear-shaped. So Joe Jackson is basically setting up this tour, and he is in bed with Don King as well, and they get involved with doing a Pepsi commercial, and they depict this very well in the film where Michael is standing up the back of a set of stairs, and the pirate techniques are all set up behind him, and they go off as the song starts, and you see his hair catch fire at the top of his head, so that's round about there. And you see the horrific burns that he endures, and it's just absolutely shocking what he went through with this particular commercial, this Pepsi incident, and it changes the way that he lives forever after that. And they do also bring up the issue, the skin condition that he has in or had in his life, where the pigmentation does change. They do address that in this particular film as well. So moving forward here, we've got here purchase of Neverland. I can't remember this in the film, but the Purchase of Neverland, a bittersweet sequence where Michael buys the Sycamore Valley Ranch and begins transforming it into Neverland Oasis, explicitly stating it's the only place that he feels safe from the world. So he was pretty scared for a guy who obviously wanted to heal the world, but again, I think that comes from his abuse with the father. This is a very cool scene as well. So we've got firing his father, and he doesn't actually do this in person. He does it by fact. So the highly charged emotional confrontation where Michael officially fires Joe Jackson as his manger, choosing John Brankar instead of taking control of his own destiny. Again, he does that via facts, which is pretty cool. The complete omission of the later allegations, a massive talking point for the reviews, due to the real world legal settlements with the Chandler estate, all references, references to the 1993 and later allegations were rewritten or scrubbed completely. Very interesting. The movie deliberately cuts off before those chapters begin. And the grand finale, which is the bad tour. So the movie culminates in a massive high-energy recreation of the 987 Bad Tour world kickoff, leaving the audience at the absolute peak of Michael Mania before the heavy shadows of his later life took over. So again, this film, what did I think of this particular film after all the spoilers and all that? And what I've already gone through. Cinematography, brilliant. It looks very, very sharp. I had a bit of an issue with the again the animal side of things, but they didn't use a real chimp, which is a good thing for bubbles. It's a CGI chimp. I didn't wasn't really a fan of that CGI chimp. Again, I'm glad they didn't use a real chimp, but they had to depict a baby chimp when he buys it or whatever. So I had a bit of an issue with that. The relationship between Joe and Michael is amazing. You see that on screen, especially scenes like when he gets his first his nose job as well, and Joe is just having a shave, and he's like comes out and goes, What the hell did you do to yourself, man? And just little things like that. It's very, very cool how they depict the relationship between these two. And the film spends a great deal of time from Michael standing up to his dad and moving away and breaking away into his solo career. So the runtime on it is pretty fair. I wasn't bored. And it the good thing about it as well is that I saw this movie on a Sunday afternoon at 1 pm or thereabouts, four weeks after the release, and the cinema was 80% full. Now that's not going to be for every film, but talking to Steven Bernstein, who I interviewed a month or two ago, he's telling me he's right in the middle of Hollywood is that it's making a big comeback from people staying at home and streaming to actually go into the movie. So it was really encouraging to see. And it was actually kids and young teenagers that were dancing in the film or in the cinema as well, which is pretty good. So I thought that was pretty cool. So again, I feel for Michael Jackson fans that you will love this movie. It's definitely built for Michael Jackson fans, no doubt, 100%. So if you're a Michael Jackson fan, you are absolutely going to love this film. But it is a very safe Michael Jackson film. Again, the movie is only one-third of his life, I feel. It stops in the late 80s in the tour that I just mentioned before, and completely scrubs over any of the allegations which we all know took place. Again, I'm not saying whether they're correct or not. It's just that the film bypasses that completely. So at the end of the movie, it does say that his story does continue. There are rumors that he is going to be, or they're going to be making Michael II or part two or whatever it is, but they're going to have to address everything that happened in the 90s and the 2000s and to his ultimate untimely death in 2009. So it's a great film. I did love it. When I say love it, I did really enjoy it. Love's probably a strong word, but it's a good, wholesome, safe Michael Jackson film. And if you do love his work, you will enjoy this movie, no doubt whatsoever. So is it worth going and seeing on the big screen? I'm sure it's going to be in cinemas for a little while to come. But yes, it is. Definitely go and see it, especially because of the King of Pop. But again, if you're looking for the real story, the 100% correct story, which I'm sure this is to a degree, it's not his full story, and they bypass a lot of the gritty stuff other than what you see with the Pepsi commercial and the dad's abuse and whatnot, and they focus really on the positive, which is good, but compared to like Bohemian Rap City and Rocket Man and all that, there's it's chalk and cheese in terms of grit about the real stories about what those people went through. So there it is for the film Michael. Thank you for tuning in to this review. Keep subscribing if you like this video. Hit subscribe, hit like, share. Again, we're on YouTube, Spotify, and now Apple Podcast Video Format. We're so excited about that because a lot of the big shows, I'm not naming names, they are not on this platform in terms of a video as yet. They probably will be down the track. But DMAR is one of the first, not the first, but one of the first shows to be utilizing the video format on Apple Podcasts. So again, keep watching. We're gonna be lining up more interviews as the months roll on. We're just getting started here in the 4K studio. As you can see behind me, we're gonna keep building it up. And as per usual, ladies on the menji.

SPEAKER_00 27:00

You've just experienced DMR, the red carpet treatment. Now, get your ass to the movies.